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An old piece of work…. I still have quite vivid memories of sewing this in the final year of my degree, hunched up in my little corner of the school of art studio (the room on the left at the top of the stairs).

It was always very quiet up there (I wonder where all my fellow students did their best work?), and it smelt like a wonderful old art school should smell. Safe and quite comforting.

A sneak preview. I’ve sewn the horizontal rows, now just gotta stitch these all together…. getting there. It’s gonna look amazing on a wall in a gallery. Oh yes please! Loosely hung up, so its all lovely and textured and tactile and vaguely crumpled…. so you could attempt to see the other side perhaps……

I made this lovely little thing today. I have a feeling that there are going to be a crochet-filled few weeks ahead…………It is so addictive! I have a box full of unfinished bits of crochet and felt, which I am determined to make something beautiful with. I spent so long experimenting with felt making last year, and nothing ever really came of it… One day, one da

Ah, and what is this? This is the start of something epic (along with my odd-socked-toes). Another unrealised idea from 2012 – my Sketch Book Honesty installation. That never happened. I did approach a number of galleries, but never mind, this is to be a new improved incarnation! I am making a patchwork quilt out of the pages. 110 pages, hand sewn together. Quilts are comforting and cosy and sewing is calming and comforting and lovely… and the pages of this specific sketchbook are… emotional and chaotic and powerful and argh. Catharsis. Making something new and lovely out of not-very-nice-memories. Enough time has passed that the pages feel like they were made by a different person. Am very excited about finishing this thing. Lovelystuff.

I finished this today. Need a better picture of it, but it is quite gloomy here now, alas. Have to wait til tomorrow.

‘We Daydream Alone’, embroidery, 2013

Yes, the words are InMe lyrics…(I love them oh-so-much)… I wouldn’t say they were stolen. What’s that silly arty word I Iearnt once-upon-a-time…? REAPPROPRIATE. I have reappropriated beautiful, inspirational words. And there is nothing wrong with that. I think they’re rather bloody good words to want to have around.

(Oh and in case you’re interested, it’s free hand embroidery (i.e. I made it up as I went along) done with red cotton, on a lovely delicate tiny doily I found in an antiques shop on one of my jaunts to Rochester.)

In my craft or sullen artExercised in the still nightWhen only the moon ragesAnd the lovers lie abedWith all their griefs in their arms,I labour by singing lightNot for ambition or breadOr the strut and trade of charmsOn the ivory stagesBut for the common wagesOf their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apartFrom the raging moon I writeOn these spindrift pagesNor for the towering deadWith their nightingales and psalmsBut for the lovers, their armsRound the griefs of the ages,Who pay no praise or wagesNor heed my craft or art.

A favourite poem that keeps coming back to me. Dylan Thomas is wonderful. Sweetdreams x